Florida Panthers forward A.J. Greer will likely be facing some supplemental discipline for his hit on Calgary Flames forward Connor Zary.

On Friday night, midway through the third period, Greer was assessed a major penalty for interference and a game misconduct for a hit on Zary that sent the Flames forward dangerously into the boards head-first. Zary left the game and did not return. The Flames won 4-1 over the Panthers.

On Saturday afternoon, the NHL’s Department of Player Safety announced that Greer will have a hearing on Sunday regarding supplemental discipline. As Player Safety’s standard has been to differentiate in-person hearings specifically, this one is denoted as a phone hearing. Per the Collective Bargaining Agreement, a phone hearing can result in a suspension of no more than five games.

The Panthers were travelling on Saturday after staying overnight in Calgary following their loss to the Flames. They host the Seattle Kraken at home on Tuesday. The Flames had a recovery day on Saturday, so no updates were available regarding Zary’s injury status.

Given that Greer will be getting a hearing, a couple notes.

First, Greer was fined earlier this and was suspended in March 2023. He falls outside of the 18 month window to be designated a “repeat offender” under the NHL’s discipline rules.

Second, with the NHL dubbing the incident boarding, it gives us a clearer idea of what they may be citing as precedents in terms of similar incidents and potential punishments. We found two recent ones that seem close enough to bring up:

In both situations, the hits were from behind, with the hitter looking at the receiver’s numbers the entire way towards contact, and the hits became scary-looking (and dangerous) because the hitter could have (and probably should have) held up on the hit or made a less dangerous type of contact, and instead powered into the player’s back instead.

Given all of this, based on the precedent set and Greer not being considered a repeat offender, we would suspect that Greer will likely be suspended for two games.

We’ll hopefully have an update on Sunday on both Zary’s injury status (after Flames morning skate) and Greer’s supplemental discipline for the hit (after his hearing).